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Apple’s iPhone 15 draws long queues in China despite competition from Huawei
- Customers piled into Apple’s flagship stores on Friday, while online delivery platforms were flooded by new orders
- Chinese consumers are increasingly willing to pay for high-quality products, as smartphone prices continue to rise, analysts say
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Ben Jiangin Beijing
The new iPhone 15 series landed in Apple stores in China on Friday, drawing long queues and clearing doubts on whether the US giant could maintain its momentum in the key market after the launch of Huawei Technologies’ competing handsets and a partial government ban on Apple smartphones.
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Local customers piled into Apple’s flagship store in Beijing’s famed shopping district of Sanlitun, one of 45 official outlets in the country, to try out the four new models.
On JD Daojia, a grocery delivery platform under e-commerce giant JD.com that said it had partnered up with more than 4,600 Apple resellers, sales of the iPhone 15 series in the first two hours of launch were up 253 per cent from last year’s iPhone 14 series, according to a social media post by affiliate Dada.
Orders coming from lower-tier cities also jumped six times compared with last year’s iPhone launch, the post said, matching the fervour seen when Apple stores on e-commerce sites began accepting pre-orders last Friday.
A 21-year-old student in Beijing who only gave her surname as Li said she was looking to upgrade to the top-of-the-line iPhone 15 Pro Max from her current iPhone 11 Pro Max.
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Li said that while she was aware of Huawei’s new Mate 60 series, which has stoked nationalist sentiment in the country, she preferred the aesthetics of premium Apple handsets.
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